Paul Westphal: Celtic Sub Shined Brightly as a Sun
Paul Westphal spent three seasons as a reserve for the Boston Celtics before they traded him to Phoenix for All-Star Charlie Scott in 1975. Westphal quickly emerged as one of the NBA's top guards, making the All-Star team for five straight seasons and earning a spot on the All-NBA team four times. That deal helped both teams make it to the 1976 NBA Finals, where the Celtics triumphed in six games to capture their second title of the post-Bill Russell era. Westphal's quick thinking almost helped the Suns to win the pivotal game five; the Suns seemed to be in a hopeless situation near the end of the second overtime, down one point with one second left and no timeouts but Westphal suggested to Coach John MacLeod that they call a timeout anyway. Under the rules at that time, the Celtics would be awarded one technical free throw but the Suns could then advance the ball to midcourt, giving them a better chance to hit a shot--which is exactly what happened. That story has been recounted many times, including in my
profile of MacLeod, but I always wondered how Westphal had the poise and awareness to think of that tactic during such a pressure-packed situation. I asked him that exact question and you can learn the answer--and the complete story of his great career--by reading my article about him (10/4/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below, along with some bonus material that did not appear in the original article):
Paul Westphal averaged 16.3 ppg in 1970-71 for a USC team that finished 24-2. "I remember the first game that we played against UCLA that year," Westphal says. "We were 16-0 and they had just lost at Notre Dame and
Austin Carr (who scored 48 points for the Fighting Irish in an 89-82 victory). That was their only loss of the season. It was No. 1 versus No. 2 not only in L.A. but in the country, on national TV. Unfortunately for us, they won that game and then beat us again later in the year. We felt that we had--we couldn't say that we had the best team in the country because we lost to them twice-- clearly the second best team but we were all dressed up with nowhere to go. We knew the rules going in and if we wanted to play in the NCAA Tournament we should have won one more game."
USC was not eligible for the NCAA Tournament because each conference could only send one team (after a great Maryland team was similarly excluded in 1974 this rule was finally changed).
The Boston Celtics selected Westphal with the 10th overall pick in the 1972 draft. He joined a powerful team that would go on to win 68 games that season and may very well have won the championship if not for a shoulder injury suffered by John Havlicek during the playoffs. Jo Jo White and Don Chaney received most of the backcourt minutes, which did not leave much time for Westphal, who averaged 4.1 ppg in 8.0 mpg.
In 1973-74, the Celtics enjoyed less regular season success--winning 56 games--but won their first championship of the post-Bill Russell era. Westphal scored 7.2 ppg in 14.2 mpg. He was one of just seven Celtics who played in all 18 of the team's playoff games but he logged the fewest minutes by far of those players.
Westphal increased his regular season averages to 9.8 ppg in 19.3 mpg in 1974-75 as the Celtics won 60 games before losing to the Washington Bullets in the Eastern Conference finals. Perhaps he would have eventually become an All-Star in Boston but fate intervened when the Celtics sent Westphal (and a couple draft picks) to the Suns in exchange for All-Star Charlie Scott, a proven veteran who won the 1972 ABA scoring title before jumping to the NBA.
Scott averaged 17.6 ppg for the Celtics, who won 54 games in 1975-76 and made it to the NBA Finals for the second time in three years--but Phoenix also profited from the deal because Westphal averaged a team-high 20.5 ppg as The Little Team That Could (to borrow the title of Joe Gilmartin's book about the 1976 Suns) went 42-40 but made an improbable run to the Finals, defeating the 1975 champion Golden State Warriors along the way--a story that I previously told in
The Man Behind the Suns' Rise. "It was really special to go back into the Boston Garden and play against my old teammates," Westphal says. "It was something that I will never forget...I probably was not as intimidated as I would have been going into the Boston Garden in the playoffs for the first time (as an opponent); having been there on the other side I knew a little bit more what to expect."
The veteran Celtics eventually prevailed in six games. The lasting memory from that series is the epic Game Five, a 128-126 triple overtime victory for Boston. Westphal famously helped Phoenix extend the game by taking advantage of a loophole in the rules. In the second overtime, Phoenix trailed 111-110 with just one second left and no timeouts. Westphal suggested to coach John MacLeod that the Suns call a timeout anyway; the Celtics would be awarded one technical foul free throw but Phoenix could advance the ball to midcourt instead of inbounding from the far baseline. White sank the free throw but Gar Heard made a jumper at the buzzer to send the game into a third extra session. "Really, I just stole that from John McKay and USC football," Westphal explains. "They used to call timeouts when they didn't have any because it was only a five yard penalty and they could stop the clock when they were trying to come back at the end of games. To me, it was just something that translated to another sport. It was what people did when the situation was desperate."
Anyone who watched Game Five will never forget Westphal's unique 360 degree layup, a move that he executed successfully more than once in crucial situations. The 6-4 Westphal had an uncanny ability to improvise ways to get off a shot in a crowd. "I just played around with all kinds of trick shots in my backyard." Westphal says. "It wasn't something that I ever planned on using but if that was the only way to get the shot off and the clock was running down then I would pull something out from deep in my past. It wasn't really something that was planned. I think that experimentation is probably good. You never plan on going in and doing something like a 360 but the more body control you can have, if it comes out at the right time it might bail you out sometime. Dirk Nowitzki does that all the time; he practices wrong-footed shots and off balance shots. Pete Maravich used the same principle with all his ballhandling drills--all kinds of things that you would never do in a game but they do give you more confidence and can pull you out of a jam once in a while."
Westphal emerged not only as an All-Star but also as a First Team All-NBA player in 1976-77, averaging 21.3 ppg (17th in the NBA) and 5.7 apg (ninth in the NBA). He made the All-Star team each of the next four seasons and earned three more All-NBA selections (Second Team in 1977-78, First Team in 1978-79 and 1979-80). The one-time seventh man of the Celtics was now one of the very best players in the entire league. He and 1978 Rookie of the Year Walter Davis formed one of the top duos in the NBA in the late 1970s. "Walter Davis was one of the greatest shooters of all-time," Westphal says. "His shot was perfect. Whenever Walter hit the rim or missed, usually Coach MacLeod would take him out because he figured he must be tired."
In 1978, Westphal ranked sixth in the NBA in scoring (25.2 ppg) and tenth in assists (5.5 apg), while Davis finished ninth in scoring (24.2 ppg). They were the second highest scoring tandem in the league, finishing just behind Pete Maravich (27.0 ppg) and his New Orleans Jazz teammate Truck Robinson (22.7 ppg)--but what Westphal and Davis accomplished is more impressive when you consider three things: they played in 80 and 81 games respectively (Maravich missed 32 games due to injury, which provided more scoring opportunities for Robinson), they shot .516 and .526 from the field respectively (Maravich and Robinson each shot .444 from the field) and they only averaged about 31 mpg each while Maravich and Robinson each averaged more than 40 mpg. On a per minute basis, Westphal outscored George Gervin, who won the first of his four scoring titles.
Westphal does not lament the lost opportunity to possibly duel Gervin for the scoring crown. "I could do the math and realize that it was pretty unusual to score that many points in so few minutes," Westphal says. "My whole career I was never motivated by trying to see how many points I could score. The whole thing was to try to do whatever you could to help your team win. A record that is achieved for the sake of setting a record doesn't mean that much anyway. So to just rack up points or play in the last minutes when the game is decided doesn’t have that much meaning, really. I certainly wouldn't have minded playing more and I think that Walter felt the same way but the coach decided that he was going to parcel out the minutes that way, to have the bench play a third of the game and the starters play two thirds of the game."
The Suns were a perennial contender during those years but they never made it back to the NBA Finals. "One reason would be Bill Walton and another reason would be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Magic Johnson," Westphal says. "The other teams got better. I think that the present is always where it's at in the NBA. We had a good young team and we were knocking on the door those other years but sometimes it's an injury, sometimes another team gets loaded up, sometimes you just don't perform as well. Whatever it is, you can never take success for granted."
In 1979 and 1980 the Suns lost in the playoffs to the eventual NBA champions.
After the 1979-80 season, the Suns traded Westphal to Seattle for Dennis Johnson, the 1979 Finals MVP and one of the top defensive guards in the NBA. Westphal got off to a good start in Seattle, earning his fifth (and final) All-Star selection before a broken foot ended his season. In 1982, he signed with the New York Knicks as a veteran free agent. Westphal won the Comeback Player of the Year award after the 1982-83 season, but he never completely regained his old form. Westphal spent the final season of his career, 1983-84, as a reserve for the Suns. While his glory days as a Phoenix player were long gone, he would again become the toast of the town just a few years later. "I always wanted to coach," Westphal says. "I went to college and figured that after I graduated I'd be a high school coach someplace. Since I was able to keep playing, I just postponed that but I always wanted to coach."
John MacLeod set a good example for Westphal to follow. "I think that John Macleod was an excellent NBA coach," Westphal says. "He had longevity in Phoenix especially and he coached a few other stops as well, mainly because of his professionalism. He loved the game and he loved to see the game played right. I think that more than anything John's consistency and his professionalism are things that anybody should try to emulate."
Westphal spent three seasons as an assistant coach at the collegiate level and four seasons as a Suns' assistant before being hired as the team’s head coach prior to the 1992-93 season. That was the year that the Suns acquired Charles Barkley in a blockbuster trade with Philadelphia. Barkley stormed to the 1993 MVP while leading the Suns to the best record in the league, 62-20. The Suns made it to the Finals for the first time since Westphal and company lost to the Celtics in 1976 but they fell in six games to the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen Chicago Bulls. Westphal guided the Suns to the conference semifinals in 1994 and 1995 but was replaced in 1996 after the Suns dropped to fifth place in the Pacific Division.
Westphal later became the coach of another of his former teams, Seattle. He led the Sonics to a 25-25 record in the lockout-shortened 1999 season and to a playoff appearance in 2000 before being replaced early in the 2000-01 season. After that, he spent four seasons as the head coach at Pepperdine, compiling a 69-52 record. Prior to this season, Westphal joined Avery Johnson's Dallas Mavericks coaching staff.
********************************
Here are a couple bonus quotes from the Suns' All-NBA guard:
***"My favorite player was Elgin Baylor. A lot of people thought that it was Jerry West because I grew up in L.A. watching those guys. I loved Jerry West, too, and I look more like Jerry West but I tried to play like Elgin Baylor. I wish they had better film that they could show from back then. He had amazing body control. He really learned the art of what Chick Hearn called 'hanging in the air.' He could go up and contort his body and change the arc of his shot, change the release point, and really make some spectacular plays."
***"I think that John Havlicek probably was the best two way player that I recall from my era. I played against Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain at the end of their careers and I played against Michael Jordan (in a scrimmage between NBA stars and the 1984 Olympic team) at the beginning of his career--and I played against Oscar Robertson--but the guy who was in his prime who I thought was the best all around player was John Havlicek. I thought that Norm Van Lier was the toughest guy who ever guarded me. There were a lot of players who were tough for me to guard but I think that because of his quickness I had the least chance to have any success at all against Nate Archibald."
Labels: Boston Celtics, Charlie Scott, Dallas Mavericks, Dennis Johnson, John MacLeod, New York Knicks, Paul Westphal, Phoenix Suns, Walter Davis
posted by David Friedman @ 2:37 PM
The Man Behind the Suns' Rise
John MacLeod lifted the Suns from expansion team status all the way to the 1976 NBA Finals. Although he never made it back to the Finals, his tenure in Phoenix consisted of much more than that one playoff run; he helped build the Suns into perennial Western Conference contenders. Later, he coached the Dallas Mavericks to the Western Conference Finals, that team's best playoff performance until Dirk Nowitzki led Dallas to the 2006 NBA Finals. MacLeod coached several All-NBA and All-Star performers but you may be surprised to learn who he says "had the softest shot of anybody I've ever seen." You can read all about his career in my newest article for HoopsHype.com (10/4/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
When John MacLeod became the Phoenix Suns' coach in 1973, the team had just finished its fifth season and he had no NBA experience. MacLeod had spent the previous six years leading Oklahoma to a 90-69 record and two NIT appearances--a very good run at a school that has always been known primarily for its football program. MacLeod's success caught the eye of Phoenix general manager Jerry Colangelo, who had gone through five different coaches--including two interim stints himself--in the team's brief NBA existence.
The Suns showed little improvement in MacLeod's first two years, but everything came together in 1975-76. The 1976 Suns were led by guard Paul Westphal (20.5 ppg) and center Alvan Adams (19.0 ppg), who won Rookie of the Year honors and was the first rookie to play in the All-Star Game since Sidney Wicks in 1972.
The Suns started the season 14-9 but went through a 4-18 stretch that put their playoff chances in serious jeopardy. Phoenix then traded forward John Shumate to Buffalo for forward Garfield Heard. Shumate had been a productive player but things just clicked for the Suns after Heard joined the team; they went 24-13 the rest of the way, finishing with a 42-40 record and beating out the Lakers for the last playoff spot by just two games.
Phoenix advanced to the Western Conference Finals, where they faced the defending champion Golden State Warriors, owners of the league's best record, 59-23. Rick Barry, the 1975 Finals MVP, scored 38 points in game one as the Warriors destroyed the Suns 128-103 but Phoenix grabbed home-court advantage with a 108-101 game two victory despite Barry's 44 points. After that, the teams traded wins, with Golden State enjoying home-court advantage for game seven--but Barry inexplicably scored just six points in the last 34 minutes of the game and Phoenix won 94-86 to advance to the Finals for the first time in franchise history.
In the Finals, the upstart Suns faced the heavily favored Boston Celtics, the 1974 champions. Powered by Dave Cowens' triple double (25 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists), Boston captured Game One 98-87. The Celtics led by as many as 28 in game two before settling for a 105-90 win. When the series shifted to Phoenix, the Suns won two close games, setting the stage for what would later be called "The Greatest Game Ever Played."
Thanks to ESPN Classic and NBA TV, just about every basketball fan has seen Game Five of the 1976 NBA Finals and heard Brent Musburger's enthusiastic descriptions of the triple overtime contest that contained so many dramatic moments. "I remember walking out on to the floor of the Boston Garden at 9 pm on a Friday night," says MacLeod. "There was no air conditioning, it was hot and there was already a lot of Boston spirit in there because instead of going home (from work) people went right to the taverns and had a couple beers and then came to watch the game."
Phoenix trailed 32-12 in the first quarter and 42-20 in the second quarter but the Suns battled back to get within 94-89 with 56 seconds left in regulation. Ex-Celtic Westphal scored five straight points in the next 17 seconds and each team added one more free throw to send the game into overtime knotted at 95-95. The first overtime ended in a 101-101 tie and then the teams battled through a tightly contested second overtime until Phoenix forward Curtis Perry hit a jumper with five seconds left to put the Suns up 110-109. John Havlicek, despite being hobbled by a plantar fascia injury, countered with a runner to give Boston a 111-110 lead. Initially the clock ran out after Havlicek's shot but the referees determined that there should still be one second left.
The Suns were out of timeouts but Westphal cagily reminded MacLeod that if the Suns called a timeout anyway that Boston would shoot one technical free throw and Phoenix would then be permitted to advance the ball to the frontcourt for the inbounds pass (that rule was later changed as a result of this game). After Jo Jo White made the free throw the Suns inbounded the ball to Heard, whose jumper beat the clock and sent the game into a third overtime.
Fatigue and foul trouble had taken their toll on both teams' starters by this point and little used reserve Glenn McDonald proved to be the Celtics' hero, scoring six points in a little over a minute late in the third overtime to give the Celtics just enough of a cushion to escape with a 128-126 victory. "It was a fantastic game with great shots, great defense. Just a game that people who attended will never forget and a game that people who watched on TV will always remember where they were when everything took place," MacLeod says.
Game Six, played less than 36 hours after game five ended, proved to be an anti-climactic matchup of two mentally and physically drained teams. Boston prevailed 87-80, which at that time tied for the second fewest points scored in a Finals game since the introduction of the 24-second shot clock. "We weren't expected to be there; we came out of a situation where we had a lot of players injured early in the year but all of a sudden we perked up," MacLeod says of that magical season. "It was a great run--something I’ll never forget."
Injuries caused the Suns to drop to 34-48 and miss the 1977 playoffs but the team bounced back to post a 49-33 record in 1977-78. Westphal averaged 25.2 ppg and he received a lot of help from 1978 Rookie of the Year Walter Davis (24.2 ppg); both players made the All-NBA Second Team as the Suns emerged as one of the highest scoring teams in the NBA (112.3 ppg, fifth out of 22 teams). The Milwaukee Bucks defeated them 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs.
"Walter Davis was a special, special player," MacLeod says. "He was one of the most unbelievable pressure players that I've ever been around. He loved to practice and he loved to play. When we had a late game situation it was going to be either Walter or Paul, but for the most part it was going to be Walter because he was uncanny. Pressure did not bother him. He never got rattled. He made a ton of game-winning shots for us. He had great speed. He could go from the top of the key at one end of the floor to the top of the key at the other end of the floor full bore and then pull up and the end result would be a soft, feathery jump shot. He was a great shooter."
The Suns ranked second in the league in scoring (115.4 ppg) and went 50-32 in 1978-79 as Westphal (24.0 ppg) made the All-NBA First Team and Davis (23.6 ppg) made the All-NBA Second Team. Phoenix beat Portland 2-1 in the first round and then smashed the Kansas City Kings 4-1 to reach the Western Conference Finals, where they faced Seattle, the defending conference champions. The Suns lost the first two games in Seattle but rallied to take the next three contests. Seattle escaped with a 106-105 game six victory in Phoenix and then rode outstanding performances by Jack Sikma (33 points, 11 rebounds), Gus Williams (29 points) and Dennis Johnson (28 points) to a 114-110 game seven win.
Phoenix improved to 55-27 in 1979-80 but dropped to third in the Pacific Division standings behind Seattle and the resurgent Lakers, who paired rookie Magic Johnson with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Phoenix beat Kansas City 2-1 in the first round but lost 4-1 to the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals. That series was actually a little closer than the final margin suggests, as the first two games in L.A. each went to overtime before the Lakers prevailed. After that, a close road win gave L.A. a 3-0 lead.
Prior to the 1980-81 season, the Suns traded Westphal to Seattle for defensive stopper (and 1979 Finals MVP) Dennis Johnson. The Suns still scored a lot (110.0 ppg) but the addition of Johnson helped them improve to third in points allowed (104.5 ppg). Phoenix set a franchise record for wins for the fourth straight season, going 57-25 to win the Pacific Division with the best record in the Western Conference. Magic Johnson missed more than half the season with a knee injury and his Lakers were bounced out in the first round but the Suns failed to take advantage of this, falling behind 3-1 in the conference semifinals against the 40-42 Kansas City Kings. The Suns forced a game seven in Phoenix but the Kings prevailed 95-88 behind 23 points each from Ernie Grunfeld and Reggie King.
Magic Johnson returned to health in 1981-82 and Walter Davis missed 27 games due to injuries, so the Suns fell back to third in the Pacific (46-36). They beat Denver 2-1 in the first round before being swept 4-0 by the Lakers.
In 1982-83 the Suns went 53-29 but Denver knocked them off 2-1 in the first round. The Suns dropped to 41-41 in 1983-84 but defeated Portland and Utah to advance to the Western Conference Finals. There they faced the powerful Lakers, who promptly took a 2-0 lead before eliminating the Suns in six games.
Injuries decimated the Suns in the next couple seasons and Davis spent a couple stints in drug rehabilitation programs. MacLeod was fired during the 1986-87 season when the Suns were 22-34.
Next season he became Dallas' head coach, leading the Mavericks to 53 wins in 1987-88. Dallas beat Houston 3-1 in the first round, a series capped off in game four when Mavericks forward Mark Aguirre scored 27 points in one quarter. "Mark Aguirre was undersized for a 'four' but we played him at the 'three' a lot," MacLeod explains. "He had the softest shot of anybody I've ever seen and that was how he got it off over taller defenders. He'd get the ball on the rim and instead of bouncing out it would kind of roll around like it was massaging the rim and then it would go in. Mark was a tremendous offensive player. He had a complete offensive game. He was a passer. He was a power player inside who could play against bigger people and he also had the ability to drive the ball to the basket."
The Mavericks defeated Denver 4-2 to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history, where they faced MacLeod's old nemesis from his Phoenix days: the L.A. Lakers. Dallas battled very gamely against the defending champion Lakers but the home team won every game in the series, with the Lakers wrapping up matters with a 117-102 game seven victory. Dallas started 9-3 in 1988-89 but injuries and Roy Tarpley's indefinite suspension from the NBA for drug use sent the team reeling. Dallas traded Aguirre to Detroit for Adrian Dantley midway through the season; Aguirre helped the Pistons to win their first championship, while Dantley initially refused to report to Dallas. Not surprisingly, Dallas’ record plummeted and MacLeod was fired early in the 1989-90 season.
MacLeod had a brief run as the New York Knicks' coach, leading the team to the 1991 playoffs, before being replaced by Pat Riley. He coached at Notre Dame from 1991-99, winning Big East Coach of the Year honors for the 1996-97 season. Since then, he has been an assistant coach in Phoenix, Denver and most recently in Golden State, where he served under Mike Montgomery before Don Nelson took over as head coach.
Labels: Dallas Mavericks, John MacLeod, Mark Aguirre, Paul Westphal, Phoenix Suns, Walter Davis
posted by David Friedman @ 6:56 PM
Mark Aguirre: Dropping Knowledge
Mark Aguirre earned three All-Star appearances and played on two championship teams during a golden age of NBA small forwards, the 1980s. During that decade, legends like three-time MVP Larry Bird and 1981 MVP Julius Erving headlined a group of forwards that included Adrian Dantley, Alex English, Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins and James Worthy. Aguirre could score from anywhere: on the post, facing up or bombing away from outside. He also was an excellent passer, very capable of making teams pay for double-teaming him. Now he works as an assistant coach for the New York Knicks, tutoring their big men on the finer points of post play.
Here is a link to my article about Aguirre (9/3/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
The 1980s were a golden age for NBA small forwards, headlined by three-time MVP (1984-86) Larry Bird and 1981 MVP Julius Erving. Adrian Dantley, Alex English, Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins and James Worthy are a few of the talented forwards who had at least some of their prime years during that decade. Another player also deserves to be included in that group: Mark Aguirre
Aguirre starred at DePaul University from 1979 to 1981. He won the Naismith Award in 1980 and was also named Player of the Year by the AP, the UPI
and the USBWA after averaging 26.8 ppg and 7.6 rpg while shooting .540
from the field. DePaul finished the regular season as the No. 1 ranked
team in the country in 1980 and 1981 but on both occasions the Blue
Demons were upset in the NCAA Tournament. Ray Meyer helped Aguirre to hone his skills.
"I
was always physically strong," Aguirre says. "When I got to him, he
turned what I was doing into more of an art, if you want to call it
that, where I would totally be in control of my pivot. You would never
be in control of me. I could pretty much say that I'm going here and
when you do what you do I'm going to have you either this way or that
way. It took knowing angles, locking people, understanding my leverage
and things like that."
Aguirre left DePaul after his junior season and the Dallas Mavericks selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1981 draft. Aguirre
missed 31 games due to injuries but still averaged 18.7 ppg and ranked
seventh in the league in three-point field goal percentage (.352). He
clearly established himself as the team's best player in 1982-83,
ranking sixth in the league in scoring (24.4 ppg), a better average than
either Bird or Erving posted that year. He also ranked third on the
team in rebounding (6.3 rpg) and second in assists (4.1 apg).
He
earned his first All-Star selection in 1983-84 when he ranked second in
the league in scoring (29.5 ppg) and maintained his status as Dallas'
third best rebounder (5.9 rpg) and second best playmaker (4.5 apg). He
also shot a career-high .524 from the field. Dallas qualified for the
playoffs for the first time in franchise history, beating Seattle in the first round before bowing to the powerful Lakers.
Aguirre's scoring averages in December (32.3 ppg) and January (30.5
ppg) that season are the two best monthly averages in Mavericks'
history.
Aguirre
posted good numbers in the first half of the 1984-85 season, but was
not selected to the All-Star team. After learning of the snub, Aguirre
scored a career-high 49 points and grabbed nine rebounds against
Erving's 76ers in a 111-109 Dallas win."When
I wasn’t selected, that was upsetting and, sure, I wanted to let
everybody know that it was a mistake and I had one of the better
forwards in the league to do that against," Aguirre says of his
performance against one of the legends of the game. "That happened to be
the first game, but from that night on I was going to go after
everybody. It helped me; it made me better." Aguirre had four more 40-point games in the last 30 games of the season.
The
6-foot-6 foward earned All-Star selections in 1987 and 1988 as the
Mavericks emerged as a real force in the Western Conference, winning 55
games in 1987 and 53 games in 1988. Seattle stunned Dallas in the first
round in 1987, but the Mavericks made it to the Western Conference
Finals in 1988 before being eliminated in seven games by the defending
champion Lakers.
In the decisive game of the Mavericks’ first-round series versus Houston, Aguirre put on one of the best offensive displays in postseason history, scoring 27 points in one quarter, which still trails only Sleepy Floyd's NBA record of 29 set the previous year.
"The
biggest thing is that it came after being in a slump," Aguirre
explains. "I have to give a lot of credit to a good friend of mine--Brad Davis.
We had been pressing, trying to move deep into the playoffs and I knew
that I had to perform in order for that to happen. I kind of pressed
myself and I wasn't playing well. Brad took me to play golf. That was my
first time ever playing golf. That was the day before we played
Houston. He said, 'You need to relax.' He just came to my door, knocked
on my door, pulled me out of my room. I had no idea what golf was. That
relaxed me but when it came I knew it was there. Derek Harper just stopped running plays and he just said, 'Wherever you are at, just ask me for it.' That's what happened."
"He had the softest shot of anybody I have ever seen,"
John MacLeod,
Dallas' coach at that time, recalls. "That is how he got it off over
bigger people. He'd get it on the rim and instead of bouncing back out
the ball would kind of roll around like it was massaging the rim before
it went in. Mark was a tremendous offensive player. He had a complete
offensive game. He was a passer, he was a power player inside--he
played against bigger people--and then he had the ability to drive the
ball to the basket. So, he was a complete player."
"Having
a smaller forward guarding me was never, ever going to work," Aguirre
says simply. "So I played against mostly power forwards, but I could
take them down (on the block), too--but I could also take them
outside."
The
next season, Dallas had the best record in the Western Conference on
December 29, 1988 (17-9) but soon after that the team was rocked by the
loss of talented young forward/center Roy Tarpley, who
was suspended indefinitely for violating the NBA's substance abuse
policy. Then the Mavericks took the strange step of trading their best
player away, shipping Aguirre to Detroit for Adrian Dantley and a 1991
first-round draft choice. Dantley finished that season with his worst
statistics in more than a decade and played in only 55 games in the next
two seasons before retiring.
Aguirre was keenly aware that the spotlight was on him after Detroit traded away the popular Dantley. "We
had to win the title," he states with conviction. "There is no
question. Before I came, I let them know that if we don't win the title
this is a bust. I was totally confident in looking at their team (that I
could help Detroit win the championship). I knew what Adrian was and
he's a great player, but he wasn't an absolute post player. He faced up
more than he posted up. So with me being on the post, I created more
spacing for the Pistons offensively."
The
Pistons went 31-6 after the trade, 29-4 after Aguirre got fully
acclimated and became a starter. He proved that he was willing to do
whatever it took to win a championship, seamlessly accepting fewer
minutes and shot attempts than he was accustomed to getting in Dallas."That
was the hardest thing that I ever did," Aguirre recalls. "It was
extremely difficult to produce 14 points in like 24 minutes. So I got
through it and nobody will know how difficult that was."
The Pistons won back-to-back titles after acquiring Aguirre and statistics do not completely capture his impact on those teams. "He was very underrated," says Scottie Pippen,
who squared off against Aguirre in some memorable playoff series. "He
was a very dominant player when he was with Dallas. Even when he came
over to Detroit and won championships, Mark was still a very bona fide
scorer."
Aguirre
often drew double-teams and made a crisp bounce pass out of the post,
initiating a sequence in which the ball got swung around before Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Vinnie Johnson or Bill Laimbeer
made an open shot. Aguirre's post-up and his pass out of the resulting
double-team led to the score, but there is no statistical record of his
contribution. "No, there’s no stat for that," Aguirre says. "Maybe there will be one day."
In hockey there can be two assists on a play, recognizing the importance of the pass that led to the final pass. "Oh, I would have had a lot of those," Aguirre agrees.
Mentoring the Knicks' Young Post Players
Aguirre has been an assistant coach with the New York Knicks since 2003. He teaches the team's young corps of big men the fundamentals of post play that he first mastered at DePaul. "If
you think about basketball, the closer you can get, the better it is,"
Aguirre says of his coaching philosophy. "So I start there. Being able
to be close to the basket in a manner that is effective for you takes a
few things. It takes cleaning up your footwork first, then understanding
leverage and then understanding how to read your defender. Those I take
in sequence just like that. The first thing I have to teach them is how
to move and get to where you have to go."
Fortunately
for Aguirre and the Knicks, the young players that Isiah Thomas has
drafted and acquired are proving to be good pupils. "The guys I'm teaching now are really learning," Aguirre notes with approval. "Eddy Curry, David Lee and Channing Frye have been really great--I'm really happy with where they are."
I've
always felt that one of Curry's biggest problems has been poor hands. I
asked Aguirre if he agreed with that and what could be done about it."You
are right," Aguirre said, "but what you have to understand is that when
I don't know where my man is I tend to not be able to keep a constant
focus on where the ball is coming from. If I post up and I don't know
where my man is, then I take my eye off the ball and try to find him and
then the ball is there. When I looked at film of him, I saw that he
bobbles the ball if he doesn't get locked in on the ball. When he sees
the ball coming at him then he's fine."
In order to improve Curry's hands Aguirre literally rebuilt his game from the ground up."That's
footwork and that's leverage and that's learning how to lock the
defender," Aguirre explains. "See, once I do those things I don't have
to look at you; I know where you are."
Aguirre teaches his young charges how to seal the defender on their hip."Now
I can focus on the ball, which makes it easier for me to catch the
ball," he says. "If I'm looking for you and then they throw me the ball,
I'm going to miss a few of them. So we had to solve that problem...With a
guy who is supposed to have bad hands, you can look at him a lot of
times and see that he is out of rhythm with the pass. A guy with soft
hands is always in rhythm with the pass. A guy with bad hands is always
out of rhythm with the pass, so you can try to create a rhythm for a guy-- teach him to get in rhythm with the ball and that will help him a
little bit."
Labels: Adrian Dantley, Dallas Mavericks, DePaul, Detroit Pistons, Isiah Thomas, John MacLeod, Mark Aguirre, New York Knicks, Ray Meyer
posted by David Friedman @ 10:07 PM
